Escambia Bay and local bayous at Redfish University-Dec. 12, 13 2011

My local monthly/bi-monthly clients won’t give me a break this Winter! Everyone wants to catch a Grand Slam. Fished with a great client yesterday who lives on north Escambia Bay and wanted to figure out why he wasn’t catching fish up there. I’m not a huge fan of fishing north Escambia Bay and the Escambia River during any time of the year, but we really wanted to find him some big numbers of fish in his own backyard. Fished Escambia River, another river that I don’t know the name of, Mulat Bayou(the deeper water and the ponds) and Indian Bayou. Found plenty of speckled trout in the river system but not great quality. We did find some decent flounder and some 20-23″ redfish as well. Grand Slam in 30 minutes. Moved down to the bayous and found mullet and bait in a few areas. Produced some trout up to 3#, redfish to 23″ and two more 14″ flounder. Moved back north to some coves and shallow banks to find a few more decent redfish and a few bass in the 1.5# range. I guess we got some sort of Super Slam. Threw Jerkys in camo and 1/4oz. Johnson Gold Spoons all morning. No fish released today and they’re heading to a family fishfry. He know where to catch tons of speckled trout, redfish and flounder now.

Today, I fished with another awesome client that wanted to fish Bayou Grande and Bayou Texar. Started at 400am!! We fished dock lights in Grande and caught a bunch of speckled trout, medium redfish a 13″ flounder. Trailered over to Texar and decided to fish the northern reaches of the bayou. Found better quality trout up to 3.5# but no huge fish today. We also hit the shallow banks and got 6 redfish up to 24″ with most in the 22″ range. One flounder. Same baits. We’ve scaled down our fluorocarbon leaders to 10-12# and will continue with that all Winter. Better strike ratio and an increased chance for large fish in the clear water. All fish released this morning. Thanks, E Holstman

Please click an image to enlarge.

Recent Classroom Reports

Redfish University on Facebook

These are the incredible companies that have made me so successful in professional tournament fishing and provide my clients at Redfish University with the world's best and latest in saltwater fishing gear. Please visit Eric Holstman's Pro Staff pages on all sponsor websites.